SSRN has updated its monthly rankings of 750 American and international law school faculties and 3,000 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN database. This ranking includes downloads from two 30- and 35-page papers by 12 tax professors on the new tax legislation that garnered a lot of media attention (including the New York Times and Washington Post) and generated a massive amount of downloads (the papers are the most downloaded papers over the past 12 months across all of SSRN and the most downloaded tax papers of all-time by over 200%). See Brian Leiter (Chicago), 11 Tax Profs Blow Up The SSRN Download Rankings. (For some reason, Mitchell Kane (NYU) — the twelfth academic co-author of the two papers — is not included in the SSRN download rankings (although the downloads are included on his individual author page)). Here is the new list (through June 1, 2018) of the Top 25 U.S. Tax Professors in two of the SSRN categories: all-time downloads and recent downloads (within the past 12 months):

All-Time

Recent

1

Reuven Avi-Yonah (Mich.)

165,731

Reuven Avi-Yonah (Mich.)

96,082

2

Dan Shaviro (NYU)

104,949

Daniel Hemel (Chicago)

92,055

3

David Gamage (Indiana)

100,276

David Gamage (Indiana)

88,485

4

Lily Batchelder (NYU)

99,505

Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)

87,770

5

Daniel Hemel (Chicago)

95,786

Dan Shaviro (NYU)

87,629

6

Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)

94,274

Manoj Viswanathan (Hastings)

87,125

7

Cliff Fleming (BYU)

91,445

Lily Batchelder (NYU)

86,248

8

David Kamin (NYU)

87,750

Cliff Fleming (BYU)

86,000

9

Rebecca Kysar (Brooklyn)

87,549

Ari Glogower (Ohio State)

85,559

10

Manoj Viswanathan (Hastings)

87,218

David Kamin (NYU)

85,395

11

Ari Glogower (Ohio State)

85,777

Rebecca Kysar (Brooklyn)

85,305

12

Michael Simkovic (USC)

40,103

Gladriel Shobe (BYU)

23,064

13

D. Dharmapala (Chicago)

34,500

Richard Ainsworth (BU)

3,621

14

Paul Caron (Pepperdine)

34,465

Michael Simkovic (USC)

3,582

15

Louis Kaplow (Harvard)

29,863

D. Dharmapala (Chicago)

3,516

16

Ed Kleinbard (USC)

24,812

Jacob Goldin (Stanford)

2,654

17

Richard Ainsworth (BU)

24,679

Omri Marian (UC-Irvine)

2,636

18

Vic Fleischer (San Diego)

24,650

Hugh Ault (Boston College

2,423

19

Jim Hines (Michigan)

23,803

Sam Donaldson (Georgia St.)

2,314

20

Gladriel Shobe (BYU)

23,629

Kirk Stark (UCLA)

2,304

21

Richard Kaplan (Illinois)

22,931

Ruth Mason (Virginia)

2,286

22

Ted Seto (Loyola-L.A.)

22,781

Kyle Rozema (Chicago)

2,236

23

Katie Pratt (Loyola-L.A.)

21,255

Stephen Shay (Harvard)

2,142

24

Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)

20,359

Ed Kleinbard (USC)

2,135

25

David Weisbach (Chicago)

20,306

Steven Bank (UCLA)

1,737

Note that this ranking includes full-time tax professors with at least one tax paper on SSRN, and all papers (including non-tax papers) by these tax professors are included in the SSRN data.